Bulgaria patches up budget deficit with €1.47 billion from Brussels

The European Commission (EC) has transferred the third payment under Bulgaria’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), the Council of Ministers announced on Monday. The expected €1.47 billion plays a key role in the Ministry of Finance’s (MF) plans to reduce the budget deficit for 2025, which, according to the latest data for October, amounts to almost BGN 6.6 billion.

The EC has assessed 48 out of a total of 50 milestones and targets as fulfilled. The failure to meet two targets, most likely related to the Anti-Corruption Commission, was the reason for the payment being cut again by more than €150 million. We’d like to remind you that payment No. 2, which Bulgaria received on November 11, was reduced by more than €200 million. At that time our country received €438.6 million.

The third request for payment under the PPA covers 22 reforms and 19 investments and is the largest submitted to date,” the press office of the Council of Ministers said.

The Ministry of Finance estimates the amount received’ll compensate for the deficit in the EU funds accounts (exceeding €2.1 billion), which’ll improve the overall balance of the consolidated fiscal program (CFP).

The leading measures reported in today’s transaction are related to the continuation of reforms in areas such as research and innovation, decarbonisation, public procurement, improving the framework for the management of state-owned enterprises, developing e-government and e-health etc.

With today’s payment the total funds received from the European Commission during the year amount to €1.9 billion, which exceeds more than half of the total allocation under the NAP.

The funds paid out to beneficiaries since the beginning of the year have also more than tripled, from BGN 1.5 billion to BGN 4.5 billion.

Next year, our country is set to submit the final fourth and fifth payments under the mechanism," the Council of Ministers said categorically.

Translated with DeepL.